The building was a single storey of wattle-and-daub, whitewashed mud plastered over interlaced branches and poles; the steep roof was thatch, with an unglazed dormer window coming through it above the doorway like a nose. Smoke trickled out of a stone-and-mud chimney, and a shed of the same construction stood not far off. The large vegetable garden beside it was newly planted, the dark soil as neatly turned as a snake’s scales, and a nanny-goat stood in a small rail-fenced pasture beside a young sow; a few chickens scratched around the plank door of the modest home.
‘Hello, strangers,’ a man said, as he turned from latching the wicker garden gate with a twist of willow-twig.
He had a spade in his hand, oak with an iron rim; he smiled as he set it down against the fence, but that put his hand within reach of a billhook leaning against the same barrier. That was a six-foot hickory shaft with a heavy hooked knife-blade socketed to the end, a common countryman’s tool but also a weapon at need; some soldiers carried them, although military models added a hook on the back of the blade for pulling mounted men out of the saddle.
The man himself was in patched and faded homespun breeches and shirt, barefoot, and no longer young, but tough as an old root from his looks.
Jarvis Coe bowed slightly in the saddle. ‘We’re travellers,’ he said, and gave their names. ‘We’d appreciate a place to stop for the night, for we’ve seen no inn, and would be glad to repay hospitality with a silver or so.’
The cottager’s eyes went wide, then narrowed: that was a great deal of money for an overnight stay. Jarvis flipped the coin, and the man caught it, examined it and tucked it away.
‘That’s generous of you, sir,’ the man said.
Jimmy found his accent thicker than Lorrie’s had been, a yokel burr that swallowed the last syllable of every word.
‘And it will help pay the tax on my cot. We’ve room for two on the floor—my sons are living out, working for Farmer Swidden—and I’ve some comforters with clean straw, and there’s the paddock for your horses. My Meg has some bean soup on the hob, and she baked today.’
The top half of the cottage’s door opened, and a woman looked out—late in middle age, as brown and nondescript as her husband, with lips fallen in on a mouth mostly toothless, and shrewd dark eyes. She nodded and went back inside as the men unsaddled, watered and rubbed down their mounts—Jimmy carefully copying what his companion did—and turned the horses into the small paddock.
The cottager came up with a big load of hay on the end of a wooden-tined pitchfork and tossed it to the horses, giving the nanny-goat a thump in the ribs when she tried to snatch some.
‘I’ve oats,’ he said. ‘Get some from Farmer Settin over there for helping with the reaping.’
Jimmy looked around as they ducked into the cottage. It was a single room, not overly large, with a tick bed on a frame of lashed poles in one corner, the hearth in the other, and a floor of beaten earth—which Jimmy would have minded less if there hadn’t been evidence that his hosts neither wore shoes nor scraped their feet before coming in from the yard. A ladder ran up into the loft, where the vanished sons had probably slept.
For the rest, there were a few tools on pegs—a sickle, two hoes, a scythe—and a few garments, along with the iron pot that bubbled over the low fire in the hearth. It was warm enough, and not so small they’d feel cramped. It was better than sleeping outside, Jimmy decided, even if the food didn’t look particularly inviting.
The cottager leaned the billhook against the inside wall beside the door; Jarvis and the young thief took the hint, and propped their swords beside it.
‘Let me see if I understand,’ Bram said uncertainly.
He felt intimidated by the tall stone house in town, and by the two—well, ladies—who were sitting across from him.
Mind you, they look friendly enough, he thought.
One, who everyone seemed to call Aunt Cleora, was dressed as finely as a lord’s wife, although not in quite the same style; she was probably about the same age as his mother, but looked a decade younger to peasant eyes. Miss Flora, her niece—newly arrived from Krondor—was a pretty enough lass, although not a patch on Lorrie. Lorrie looked strange herself, in one of Miss Flora’s dresses, with her bandaged leg up on a settle.
Even the cook, who looked to be right brutal when she wanted, had been sweet as candy to him; but then, he supposed she felt motherly.